It is difficult under the best of circumstances to have a well organized, efficient business meeting. All over the world, companies are spending millions of dollars annually just for the time necessary to get a few people together around a table for a meeting. If employees have to drive, or worse yet, fly to meetings, the expense goes up extremely fast; and the number of meetings and the amount of time lost is generally proportional to the size of the company. It is no wonder that telephone conference calls have become so popular.
However, meetings held by a telephone conference call have their own frustrating and sometimes serious problems. Chief among these problems is the anarchy that generally prevails in the present day telephone conference call environment due to a lack of absolute control over the means and methods of the conference. Constant interruptions of participants, confusion over who said what, and the fact that the person who speaks the loudest usually gets to talk, can make telephone conference meetings very inefficient and often painful.
In addition to the lack of discipline in the conduct of a telephone conference call, a conference held by voice alone generally is incapable of adequately describing much of the material included in the conference. For example, a graphic illustration can communicate precisely and quickly a concept that words alone will struggle to express. Thus, in voice communication alone, much is left to the imagination of the listener and the participants may get very different views of what has been said in a conversation.
Along with telephone conferencing, computer terminal conferencing has also become a reality in some settings. In computer terminal conferencing, participants type information on a computer keyboard to communicate to other conference participants. A message typed is textually displayed on participating computer terminal display devices. Communication via computer keyboards and display terminals has even extended to graphical interactions (i.e., electronic white boards), using other suitable computer input devices to transmit graphics to participating computer terminal display devices.
Although many of the existing computer terminal conferencing systems have the terminals grouped within close proximity of each other, computer bulletin board systems (BBS) exist that allow remotely located individuals to communicate with each other to some extent. In a crude and limited sense, a form of conferencing occurs through BBS communication means. Individuals can send electronic messages to the BBS, and read messages left on the BBS by other users.
However, BBS's are not capable of acting as an effective governor to moderate and administer to a multiplicity of conferencing needs. For example, a BBS cannot control the sequence-ordering of individuals communicating with each other in any fashion other than by a basic first-come first-served methodology or by limiting the time of day an individual may log-in. A BBS is not capable of defining who will be able to communicate when, relative to others communicating, in a real-time conferencing fashion. Any communication that occurs among individuals through a BBS, that is an attempt to emulate a real-time "conference" session, is at most only comparable to computer terminal conference systems as previously discussed.
Such systems simply do not offer any aspects of control or governing of communications among participants, such as who speaks when and for how long. They do not offer administrative functions such as enforcing who is authorized to join which conference session, or controlling when such a session is to occur, or for how long. Nor are they able to moderate communications to insure each individual in the conference is offered a fair opportunity to speak and be heard. They only offer crude administrative functions, such as time of day log-in and restrictions on who can access what files.
In conjunction with computer communication conferencing options, if the conference participants are physically grouped close together they may optionally verbally communicate with each other even while using the electronic communication. This allows for a choice of communication means during the conference (i.e., electronic or verbal). Further, a human moderator may be appointed to verbally intervene in an attempt to control the conference proceedings.
Finally, there are fixed station video conference terminals for scheduled meetings. However, such terminals are extremely expensive, few in number, and not available on a wide geographical basis.
Regardless of the physical means and methods employed, none of the existing conferencing approaches has been completely satisfactory. Although electronic conferencing means has been implemented, combined with human administration or moderation, conference chaos can still exist due to a lack of absolute control over the means and methods of the conference.